Paralegal Classes | Resources for Students

Paralegal Ethics

Scope of practise for Paralegals

Interesting Articles or Cases

Canadian Lawyer cover article: Discipline Dichotomy, discusses how law societies across Canada may use their discretion to discipline small firms and solo lawyers while ignoring the activity of larger firms.

Legal Feeds: Where do Paralegals Sit in Court? and the follow-up case: R. v. Lippa, 2013 ONSC 4424 (CanLII), in which the Court found that Paralegals, like everyone else, sit where they’re told to sit by the presiding ajudicator.

Specific issues

Scope of Practice

For all of these reasons, I find that the paralegal is not a suitable adult,and that permitting a paralegal to provide assistance would be inconsistent with the proper administration of justice in the Youth Justice Court. (R. v. K.P.D., 2015 ONCJ 88 (CanLII), <http://canlii.ca/t/ggg5b>.)

Dealing with Difficult Clients

Client confidentiality

In discussing Paul Bernardo’s right to solicitor-client confidentiality during a hearing to see whether the main case should be dismissed due to delay, Justice Gravely mentions:

[21] Justice Quinn in the course of making a ruling on one of the applications in this case expressed eloquently the public importance of the right when he said:

For those who might succumb to a vagrant thought as to how Bernardo, ensconced in penitentiary having been convicted of heinous crimes, has the temerity, and, is permitted, to assert rights both in this court and in the court below, it is to be remembered that the issue here is the quality of those rights rather than the quality of the litigant.http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2000/2000canlii22631/2000canlii22631.html